Between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a transition occurred in modern fiction as writers became increasingly reliant on the visual. In his study Fiction and the Camera Eye, Alan Spiegel argues that this new visual consciousness in the novel was symptomatic of the shift from a theological to a scientific understanding of the world, meaning that, in modern fiction, ‘truth’ can only be revealed through sensory experience rather than authorial intervention. In an uncertain modern world, Spiegel suggests, an author is no longer an authority; the common practice of pausing action in the novel to allow for exposition was replaced by a new subjectivity, with character development being achieved by immersing the reader in the character's visual process – in other words, a shift to showing rather than telling. While this phrase is anachronistic, it echoes nineteenth-century reflections on changing literary form; in 1840, Balzac wrote that the ‘literature of ideas’ of the eighteenth century was being replaced by a new ‘literature of images’, while in his famous preface, Joseph Conrad asserted that the task of the author of modern fiction was ‘to make you hear, to make you feel – it is before all to make you see’.

In addition to this loss of religious faith, however, cultural historians affirm that the visual consciousness of modernist fiction was also inspired by new technologies and the ways by which they altered human perception. In 1830, transport technologies were revolutionised with the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway – the first train line to transport passengers, leading to the rapid development of similar rail services across Europe. As well as being the fastest and easiest method of transportation in history, the railways also provided a sensory experience unlike anything in the realms of previous human experience. In his article ‘Contemporary Achievements in Painting’, Fernand Léger notes the influence of rail travel on perception, writing that ‘[t]he condensation of the modern picture, its variety, its breaking up of forms, are the result of all this. It is certain that the evolution of means of locomotion, and their speed, have something to do with the new way of seeing.’ Similarly, this ‘new way of seeing’ can also be related to the influence of a second new visual experience: namely, the development of motion picture technology.